Start page: at http://www.best.com/~cyber23/virarch/virarch.htm

====================

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:Undeveloped Ponderings
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Undeveloped Ponderings on The Potential Influences of Architectural Theory in Virtual Environments and Infomational Interfaces 

Introduction 

I believe a new dawn is unfolding for human environments. Virtual Architecture will become the art of creating "human" experiences for a digital reality. Does the human psychology require "place" in order to function properly? Will virtual architecture allow designers to leave function behind and deal totally with the issues of space and form? Will the virtual architecture interact with real spaces? This topic is a door into the issues of the cyberactive experence and its interaction with architecture. 

Virtual Architecture 

From at very early age the brain is able to understand the basic premises of spacial systems. The datums that define a "space" are as natural as the concepts of the culture which define it. Ideas like "hall" and "room" are a common part of our daily lives wheras abstract informational terms such as "download" and "directory tree" create abstractions that are not common in our ordinary lives. It is my belief that by symbolizing informational systems with attributes that the virtual infolmational interface would give the users vast landscapes of meaning. 

This metaphor for the user space should be as original as one's own "home" and should have a feeling that relates adapts to the unique needs of each user, much as architecture does. These "places" will have meaning, because they are born out of particular interests, much as the trappings of our real architecture does. This is what "virtual architecture" is born out of, the creation of a symbolic representation of information tokens that have spatial and formal relationships. 

The use of meaning as form of data encryption 

C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is an encryption device, allowing the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol is its ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "hooks" to other symbols that are experienced within a proxemic domain patterns of meaning develope. A church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created where the intaction btween the symbols holds greater value than the essence of any one of the symbols within that matrix. 

Archetypes of Transitional Spaces 

The fallowing set of articles is based on issues discussed in my thesis on the integration of VR with architecture. It is a summary of concepts and archetypes that would be applied to the physical world of absolute space as well as the non-space of VR. It is important to note that these sort of archetypes of space would be an import part of perception in VR, because they are based on the perceptions of human space. 

Axis 

Axis is the way to the light of goal. It can be seen in all of these examples that the theme of axis does not mean that the way is strait. It should be stated that axis infers path or way in the physical journey to goal. It is usually stated by rhythm of colonnade symbolizing the path from the homogeneous culture of the worldly to the way of God. This rhythm is not necessarily columns it could be masses that subdivided space adjacent to the axis. This is the way to the notion of place, where sky and earth meet, and ends with the passage through the threshold or initiation. 

Court 

The court supplies both light of sky and green of earth. The ground of the figure that creates it becomes the focus of awareness. The court represents the connection between the heavens and earth. This "center of the world" provides spiritual orientation to humankind's place in the cosmos. This basically represents the spiritual totem that supplies the waters of the soul. The passage into this place requires an initiation, or crossing of the threshold. It is this initiation that binds monks and scholars to their solitary search for enlightenment. 

Interrelationship of Path and Place 

It seems important to note that in most of these examples the axis and its interaction with the void of the cloister is the primary basis of the architectonics. The act of ritual in most spiritual endeavors is symbolized by path and goal. First the herald of change, the first threshold, the belly of the beast, the final threshold, and finally enlightenment (Campbell, Hero of a Thousand Faces) . This path can be direct as in Stonehenge or indirect as in the Cistercian plan. The main issue is the transition between elements and a course of design to give the project meaning as well as formal qualities. 

Telephone Book 

What I am trying to do is not just write about these concepts of archetypal space, but to actually create them in VR, by the creation of a symbolic array. The technology involved would be much like a three dimensional HyperCard. If the basic tectonics of archetypal space were constructed using 3d structures, then those structures could be symbolically replaced by individual design elements. 

Yes, collective worlds..the synthetic matrix, which essentially is an agreed upon data format, will effectively create digital cities except you can travel real fast on the streets. There will be addresses, if you think about it we already are in VR, my address is cyber23@well.sf.us and we meet at this "place". These kinds of metaphors are essential in the transition absolute space to virtual space because they are natural to our human perceptional processes. 

I think this issue is discussed very well by Avital Ronell in her (great) book "The Telephone Book". She describes the telephone conversation as a "space" where two people interact. VR just has a possibility of amplifying this "space". 

That field had meaning for me 

I think that as the sculptor creates he/she makes a set of symbolic associations that create meaning. All I am is saying is that VR holds the same possibility but on a very high very interconnected scale. Our society is doing the same thing in most medias of communication. Isn't this is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic society. I think that the fact that one could decrypt the meaning from that painting, which itself had its own symbolic array, given key words to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of the waves of meaning that could unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The "meaning" that might be communicated may be slanted by the perception of the observer at first, but a further statement of keywords could refine the image. (This is why architects have to talk ALOT. Ha ) 

interpersonal interaction modified in a virtual reality 

What is important is that VR becomes an abstraction of interpersonal relationship. We must all admit thatour perceptions of each other under this format is different than the one we would have if we were at a bar drinking a beer. And why would we try to make the same? I think its important to understand human cognition of space and use our current motifs of experience to create social interaction between users, but I think abstracting those social settings is the most exciting part of creating virtual architecture. 

pseudospaces we design using electronic media 

Can you say that the archetype of genus loci could not be within an electronic media? I believe that it is possible toreinterpret (not recreate) the basic foundations of all perceptional experiences. The value of this is the possibilityto evaluate the things that bind our human awareness. Is it not possible for two people who are not Athenians to enjoy the Akropolis based solely on its aspects of genus loci. This infers that such spatial systems are not just a social metaphors of the time in which they were built, but also bind human cognition. In a super-symbolic society the possibilities of these kinds of spatial systems being considered under a VR format seems very exciting. Once the systems were designed they could be spatially interconnected using a VR hypercard system. Any virtual architecture could spatially connect to other peices via conduits of referencing meaning with the other works. 

Ted Nelson's XANADU project works much like this except its not symbolic, and is for literary referencing, but the implications of hyper-indexed information are very similar. Society could integrate cultural meaning with technique. 

People kept dipping from the archetypal well all the time we would have a homogenous culture that could not accept new transitions in meaning unless referenced to the symbolic array. The dynamic reinterpretation of all systems should always be occurring, or we will have a stagnate cultural core. 

how 'place' gets used and discovered 

I guess it seems as though the discussions get kind of abstract. I believe that is because there are allot of people in this field who are profoundly moved by the coming of the digital genesis. Meaning is coming back to technique. VR offers an excellent opportunity to experiment with the relationship between the technique of construction and the abstract rule system that forms a theme of meaning in those forms (instantaneous perspective). 

Weird thought: The connection of meaning to form? 

You might be surprised at how many architects believe that symbolism just gets in the way of good architecture. Jencks (Towards a Symbolic Architecture) is right , the parts do not compose the soul of architecture (I hate his house though). For architecture to have a soul there must be a moral high ground, a thesis of belief. The World Trade Center is not expected to sit on the axis between life and death (The Pyramids at Chephren), we don't even expect that much from most churches. I believe that is because since the advent of a mechanized society, technique has been coveted and the subconscious has been suppressed. It is as though architects have lost their passion for understanding and applying symbolic encryption. 

Great Books of Meaning: 

Carl Jung (and friends) Man and His Symbols 

Joseph Campbell Hero of a Thousand Faces 

Mircea Eliade The Sacred and Profane 

smoking virtual el ropos and drinking virtual cheap Chianti 

What a romantic one must be to feel the nastolgia of the physical world. One doesn't have to loose the images of this world we love to use VR. The nature of Vr is to abstract this experience, and that might be enough for certain applications. We get back to this coding issue. When you discribe that experience, I see it and can imagine it, VR will only aid this proccess. Luckily man is the animal that sees a face in blobs of paint on canvas. 

This might be what will limit exactly how much the CVW (Corporate Virtual Workplace) can be shaped by virtual environment, because if that Virtual Worker does not have a belief system that can shift those visual identities into codes of meaning, then I question exactly how effective the corporation will be at shaping the perceptions of the workers. They can fly the corporate logo in the window, but will it move the worker to believe in the company if there is no identity of belief for that logo to represent? 

Virtual Architecture as a discipline of design 

VR may help us understand the built environment, but is it necessary to represent the built environment in VR? In some of my Virtual Architecture I purposely will make a roof float right above the column that visually supports it because I want to represent the medium with truth, which will reflect its beauty. That column doesn't support anything except the visual perception of the composition, so by separating it from the object I can express both the truth of the autonomous nature of each "object" while also expressing the relationship of each object to the whole. 

THIS is what excites me about Virtual Architecture, not representing the built world. Objects can be expressed in terms of perception and meaning, this is the difference between architecture and virtual architecture. I could be happy just designing space and place and tectonic solely under these constraints. 

Construction and Deconstruction in VR 

I am amazed at how VR lends itself to both schools of design. The orginal constuctionists like Chenikov, or J. P. Ooud, based their design on a belief system and an abstract proccess. The essential items that were required for programming the requirements for the building were turned in to "elements". When autonoumos elements of architecture were "composed" and expressed in both interior and exterior spaces a strong link developes with the act of creating "constructs". There were elemental principles of construction: intersection, subtraction, addition, binding, supporting, and other concepts that lended themselves for the conception of buildings as purely designed environment. This was a very idealistic movement in modern architecture. The constructivists linked their personal metaphor of socialist ideals into the basis for thier design, likening the "element" to the neccessary worker interacting with the other "elements" to create the greater whole. This approach to design gives an emphasis to the "element", and claims that the "whole" should allways be a representation of those "elements". Needless to say, Stalin made their practice of architecture impossible. 

While having the ability to be much like construction Virtual spaces/places also lend themself to deconstruction. It might be possible to break a "file" apart. It then may be possible to "dissect" the information or reogranize it in a non-linear fashion. William S. Burruoghs experimented with similar techniques with his "cutup" methodology. In architectural terms deconstruction breaks the essense of the building down into its autonomous elements and composes in a way that deals with the context of those elements more than the context of the entire composition. VR lends itself to this activity, creating a visual metephor to an domain of information, and then altering the position or relation of that domain. This is like deconstruction becase the essesnce of the understanding of the thing has stopped being in the context of "a thing" and is now "many things". 

I believe that simulation is a high frequency system much different than science. Science breaks the world up into finite peices that can be comprehendended, very similar to deconstruction theory. If we really look at deconstruction it probibly should have happened a while ago. Now I believe that our new way of things requires simulation design oriented systems in order to work with larger domains of information. 

I believe that science will always be neccesary, it is the microscope that discovers the "pieces", but simulation and design will allow us to put the millions of parts together to get the big picture. This remides me of a Monet where I see the picture in a bunch of colored dots. 

aspect of reality if the world-maker is to succeed--purposelessness 

I think we are at the crux of the issue here, although (as we all understand) the issue is very complex. "Meaning" is relative to the belief system of the observer, although there are some meaning systems we can all identify with, the archetypes. The nature of VR seems to lean towards abstraction of experience, not representation of the real world. I hope that our species does not turn inward towards total digital experience. Reality has its own richness that would be futile to recreate. 

chicory grows in the crack between the building and the sidewalk 

We don't have to worry too much about leaving this reality, the chicory will still grow, the baglady will still mumble to herself. Nothing about reality will change because of VR, so we don't have to mourn the loss. Reality will now just have a new layer placed upon it. "A synthetic veil of meaning". 

To some degree any MUD represents an abstraction of what VR will allow. I walk around and see the world, I am a sensory unit. I interpret and respond to this interpretation through communication in the MUD. These responses are abstractions of what really happened, shaped by my belief system. In this way I upload meaning to the collective consciousness. The synthetic "place" , which is virtual architecture, is an archive of collective meaning. 

Place is a type of object. 

If space is a given then it is a given on a mesurable Euclidean or Relativistic sense. This is a given in that any experience that can have measurable qualities such as "time" and "velocity", but that's not the kind of space that I am I am interested in talking about. 

Let me talk about it in these terms, when you walk into the cathedral there is a feeling of "space". There is space wherever you go, but when you go to a cathedral you get a sense of "space". Within the cathedral there are "places" where you may focus prayers on an individual elements that are manifestations of the greater whole. These are symbolic relationships between "the space" and "the places" that define a metaphor for information to be communicated in the experience. 

This relates to the claim that "place is a type of object". I would have to say to though this is true, space differs from object in the sense that perspective is not from "outside", and an object may become a space if that relationship changes. 

I see informational patterns in architecture especially (see previous discussions on symbolic arrays). I get really turned on by the idea of a "space" that is created by linking architectural elements to information. I am in the process of implementing this right now with text files, where conceptual packets are given "hooks" to a 3d element. The relationship of the packets are described in visual or architectural terms and then recomposed. 

The tokenized distributed world 

Types of Virtual Places 

Interactional places 

Procedural places 

Conceptual places 

Babble interface as experiment in multi dimentional contextural feedback 

There is a wonderful little shareware product by Korenthal Assoc. called Babble. The idea is quite amazing when you think about it and has implications in the way these "hooks" can communicate multiple dimentions of information concurrently. 

Object #1: Court 

The court supplies both light of sky and green of earth. The negative to the masses that create it becomes the focus of awareness. The court represents the connection between the heavens and earth. This "center of the world" provides spiritual orientation to humankind's place in the cosmos. This basically represents the spiritual totem that supplies the waters of the soul. The passage into this place requires an initiation, or crossing of the threshold. It is this initiation that binds monks and scholars to their solitary search for enlightenment. 

Object #2 Mean2 

C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is an encryption device, allowing the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol is its ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "hooks" to other symbols that are experienced within a proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop, a church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the essence of any one of the symbols within that matrix. 

Object #3 Field 

That field had meaning for me. I think that as the sculptor creates he/she makes a set of symbolic associations that create meaning. All I am is saying is that VR holds the same possibility but on a very high very interconnected scale. Our society is doing the same thing in most medias of communication. Isn't this is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic society. I think that the fact that one could decrypt the meaning from that painting, which itself had its own symbolic array, given key words to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of the waves of meaning that could unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The "meaning" that might be communicated may be slanted by the perception of the observer at first, but a further statement of keywords could refine the image. 

Result 

>This is field.txt only....... 

Array, given key words to gain association principles, which itself had its own symbolic. 

Our society is doing the same possibility but a further statement of meaning that could. That field had its own symbolic association principles. That field had meaning for me. I think that as the sculptor creates he/she makes a set of symbolic associations. 

Unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The "Meaning" that might be. Unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this very high very interconnected scale. 

>Now I add mean2.txt 

Society. I think that the fact that one could have meaning. That field had meaning for me. I think that as the symbols hold the same possibility but a further statement of any one of meaning that could be. Communicated may be. Unfold with other symbols. When symbols holds the same possibility but on a symbol as an encryption device. 

Ability to gain association principles, a church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created Device, proves this point fully. Think of the meaning that develope, proves this point fully. Think of meaning that develope on a very high very interconnected scale. 

Ability to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of meaning develop, allowing the user to create meaning. All I am is saying is that VR holds greater value than the essence of any one could decrypt the meaning from that means more than itself had its own symbolic array is created. 

Create a representation of the symbols within that. 

>Now I add court.txt 

Array, given key words to be slanted by the perception of the wa es of meaning develop, proves this point fully. Think of the mbols within that one could decrypt the symbols have "Hooks" to other symbols holds greater value than itself had. Where the interaction between the fact that one of the symbols within a domain holds patterns of meaning. 

Proxemic domain patterns of meaning that means more than itself that means more than itself that means more than itself. Proxemic domain patterns of the observer at first, but a symbol, an encryption. 

Matrix. 

C. G. Jung defines a very high very interconnected scale. Where the fact that one could decrypt the user to gain association principles, allowing the same possibility but on a symbol is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic. Proxemic domain patterns of symbolic array is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic.society. I think that the facts that are experienced within a set of keywords could create patterns. Proxemic domain patterns of symbolic array is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic. A device, allowing the user to create meaning. All I am is created. 

Where is the image? 

Ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "Meaning" that that create patterns. Where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the essence of the symbols within. 

>Now I'm going to put field and mean2 to 70% and court to 30%. 

Device, given key words to other symbols. When symbols have "Hooks" that mean more than the whole of the image. Proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop, allowing the user to gain association principles, allowing the user to create meaning. All I think is painting, allowing the meaning develop, a further statement of keywords could develope. 

Device, allowing the same thing in most medias of communication. Isn't this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The defining structure of a symbol of an encryption. C. G. Jung defines a further statement that any one could decrypt of the symbols within VR that holds greater value than the same thing and in its nature is a symbol as form of encryption. Where the interaction between the observer at first, but on a symbol is itself. 

That means more than itself. 

Unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The defining 

structure of a symbol to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of a set of symbolic 

associations that C. G. Jung defines as a set of a further statements of keywords that could create meaning. 

>Now 70% court and 30% mean2 and field. 

Ability to gain association principles, allowing the user to gain association principles, allowing the 

user to create meaning. All I am is its scale. 

Create a very high very high very interconnected scale. 

C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "Anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is an encryption. 

Where the interaction between the user to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of the fact that means more than itself . In its nature a symbol is to be "Anything that means more than itself". Where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the perception of the symbols within that. Proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop, a church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created. 

Device, given key words to gain association principles, a symbol to be "Anything that painting, but a further statement of keywords could". C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "Anything that one could decrypt the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol as an encryption" 

Ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "Hooks" to other symbols have "Hooks" to create a representation of an abstract concept. 

The power of this using this program is that each data object can be scaled in it's part of a changing chorus of information. I have to admit, it doesn't always make perfect sense. It does however allow me to get feedback from the influences of each text "object". 

Dream Spaces 

I would like to design a places for VR, but not just places I would also like to design scenarios. Let's say that if it were possible to create someone's symbolic system, and create physical network that represented their belief system, (see previous articles on meaning and symbolic abstraction) and then create animated entities that represented abstract manifestations of their psychology, then wouldn't you basically be creating a dream? 

I think the VR implications of this issue are profound because this would be a Jungian theory of the creation of archetypal abstractions through symbolic encryption. The next step, the macro, would be myth (Joseph Campbell). If we were able to connect patterns of meaning in these mass dreams wouldn't myth naturally develop? This is what I was getting at when I said the meaning is coming back to technique. It will be very hard for the individual identity to communicate fully without this connection to the collective myth because the use of metaphor and allegory (one of the highest thouroughput mechanisms of personal communication) will be necessary. In a nutshell: A VR based hypertext of meaning 

Object Spaces 

I am now programming the cyberspaces for CyberSchema. My scheme is two main hierarchies that represent the hardware hierarchy (loosely). First the architecture center is the cyberspace itself, offering the environment for the applications. This is very roughly a VR mix of a multiuser Windows Program Manager mixed with a HyperCard interface. Then is the user deck level strata. This is where, as Novak puts it, you are superman. Your personal working data core is constantly stored here, on your person. 

The two main applications environments : first, the dream. This is the symbolic array, the hypercard of meaning (see previous articles) this would allow the creator to determine abstract rule systems through associative meaning, or poetry (Novak, Cyberspace first steps, plate 19-22, page227). ; secondly the lathe of dreams. This is the agent that tests objects against the laws of reality, and allows a design/simulation environment to generate objects into their absolute form from their virtual form. 

The combination of these three elements produces the desired result: A holistic design environment dedicated to the transition of dream to object. I have lately been primarily influenced by object oriented programming design, and its possibilities under a VR platform, as well as Novaks commentaries in CFS, as well as Christopher Alexander's pattern languages. 

leave functionalism behind to dabble in space and form 

It will be crucial to the cognitive systems necessary to deal with vast amounts of information on a symbolic level. If we don't conceive "place" as a physical manifestation under VR how do we put objects "there". The issues of space and form can't be avoided, they are primal. Even the box can be abstracted in these terms. Since the entire experience is fictionalized the archetypes of the information systems will require some sort of a representation that contains meaning from its characteristics, these are forms. These "forms" are representations of data sets stored in areas, these are "places". A spatial composition of places that itself has meaning is a space. How could one avoid the conclusion of these distinctions? I don't think functionalism discredited these issues at all, but that is not the issue. Does functionalism apply to virtual architecture? I believe not. A reinterpretation is on the horizon. 

I think that space is going to have function no matter what the designer thinks when he/she creates it, even in VR. What I am trying to say is that "functionalism" is inappropriate as a philosophy for VR. The distinction is clear to me. Functionalism is based on truth, how can this be applied to a fictional abstraction of reality. Functionalism in the sense of a column expressing the stress that is applied to it. 

If we were to create a philosophical basis for VR similar to functionalism we would end up with an abstraction of the computing systems involved, informing the way the constructs should look. Functionalism in vr would put the software architecture above the designer because it would have to deal with expressing the systems and not the "space". 

What I am saying is that isn't the way it should be. Constructs should be symbolic abstractions of the nature of the data contained within it. By this the "forms" have meaning, and the "places" should represent the collective identity of the data sets within it. In this way all forms become places as you move into data, and all spaces become forms as you move out. Obviously the places and forms have "function", but their composition should not be a reflection its "functional systems". 

Aesthetics, functionalism, connectivity, idealism... 

The logician's favorite arguments to tear down is one that includes the word's 'any' and 'all'. In this very dynamic world not very much excludes totally. I don't think that function excludes aesthetics, functionalism, connectivity, or idealism, but sometimes their domains do not overlap completely. 

What I do think is that functionalism, as a philosophical foundation for virtual reality could be quite cumbersome for the user. I guess when it comes to truth we should distinguish what kinds of truth we are speaking of. Is this the kind of truth that tells us that 2+2 = 4 or the kind of truth that tells us that cannibalism is wrong? One is a linear system based on the physical world the other is an association to an abstract meaning system that connects eating human flesh with "wrong". People who work in ethics usually think these are the same thing, I do not. They are as different as the two sides of your brain. Functionalism has almost always dealt with the first kind of truth. I had a functionalist teacher who believed that symbolism just got in the way of good architecture. Traditionally software architecture went very well with this linear basis, number crunching. Virtual reality will be a domain where everything is a symbol for the data it contains and is connected to other symbols that represent associated data, this infers a shift towards the latter type of truth. 

I want to make it clear again that virtual architecture should not attempt to recreate the essence of 'reality', that's why its virtual, it should be an abstraction of the data to allow this non-linear structure to take hold. 

sense of hyper reality sequences. 

This is a discourse, on spatial (and therefor informational) cognitive systems, and its potential 

under virtual reality. A sense of "place" is necessary to describe the domain of the user's working data set. This place as a node in the a hyper based information network. How do we create this archetype of "place" so that our human cognitive systems can spatially distinguish different data sets. I believe something similar to gestaltian psychology (a reinterpretation would be necc.) so that data sets have individual perceptional closure. Informational archetypes would 

have to organically evolve, a more developed symbol language, this is the super symbolic society that Alvin Toffler referred to. 

Poetics of Space 

I think cyberspace is a great environment for the exploration of poetics, on every level, at once! Not only could the forms represent themselves they may also represent constructions of ideas, or music, or whatever you can dream up, all at once. This isso far away from WYSIWYG interfaces, it makes me tingle, to think that my architecture could also be a tune and movie and poem ...anything that has a time/space relationship and reveals meaning has a potential for poetics. Novak discusses this in Cyberspace Fist steps. 

At the same, it's probably the uneasy tension between exploring the issues of *space* and *information* in cyberspace that kept this concept so interesting to me. Isn't it kinda funny that its the same tension between the functional (physically funtional) and ascetic that keeps architecture so active. 

Scale & Texture 

Experiments performed by Hall, Calhoughn, and Delong all point to an increased cerebral time relativity distortion based on scale. One experiment performed by DeLong used a visual models at scale and did time based EEG and perceptional cue testing to determine that scale effects time perception DIRECTLY proportional to scale. That's right , if you perceived a 1/24th scale model as your reality, 75 seconds would seem like 30min. There was some deviation but not much. I spoke to Delong because this study is very interesting to me as a virtual architect, and he said that the military had been trying to use his theories in simulator training systems. Faster warriors. 

After talking to Delong about this extensively he also told me had done experiments with texture that created similar results, and he says its primal. He based his studies on the latency period of acclimation of lizards on sandpaperwith different textures. It would seem that variable texture mapping would be a revolution in the control perceptional relativity. 

The premises behind his theory is that this is not a cultural thing, it is not learned, so almost any human would apply to this theory. Such a simple premise has very profound implications under a virtual environment. If time becomes relative for our culture a true shift is on the horizon. 

Its a pretty simple theory, it is based on the idea that the more complex your contextual domain, the higher your brain interrupt level goes. This seems be proportional to the base human scale, and the learned past redundancy of similar scale elements. In other words if you "learn" that a door has a certain proportion to you, and then you have a Lewis Carol experience, then your brain interrupt level will change accordingly. VR has the opportunity to fine tune this transition, but a consensus of "normal" proportion would be necc. for it to occur properly, this is where Delong and I probably disagree. It seems that he would say "Hey the lizard doesn't know anything about scale, it has a very simple mind, so this must be primal, and doesn't need consensus of what 'normal' scale is". I would probably disagree, I think the lizard as well as humans learn what is "normal" and then latency is relative to the change in that criteria. 

a doctrine almost always infers a need for critique. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:Interview with Novak:ToolSpace:Influnences

Clay Graham - clay@best.com

http://www.best.com/~cyber23/virarch/ponder.htm

===============================================

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:Liquid Architectures 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morphing Media with Marcos Novak 

"...The reality of a cup is that it is there and that it is not me. We shall interpret this by saying that the series of its appearances is bounded by a principle which does not depend on my whim" 

--Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness 

"....and we can in our Thought and Imagination contrive perfect Forms of Buildings entirely separate from Matter, by settling and regulating in a certain Order, the Disposition and Conjunction of the Lines and Angles" 

--Leon Battista Alberti, The Ten Books of Architecture 

Liquid Architecture 

"I wander through worlds of mutating identities. I travel down highways whose boundaries are not fixed. Constructs sparkle, and informational images flow gracefully over their envelopes like the dreaming of a strange god. Many types of data flock around me, and webs of fact and fiction form patterns of meaning. I touch a construct, it morphs into a new reality filled with texts and images and places." 

Space is the reference point to which we gage our state of existence. Attributes of that existence could be interchangeable and transform over time in a liquid reality. In a world where dreams turn into music and our poetry transforms into space artists, architects, dancers and musicians speak to each other in the universal language of creation. Worlds exist as their conceptual archetype, but are free to mutate and change over influences of position, velocity, media input, and time. This is the basis of "Liquid Architecture", and is just one themes that is being pursued at the Advanced Design Research Group (ADRG) directed by Marcos Novak at the University of Texas in Austin. 

CY23: Your images are very dense. The density is important to create a richness of object, but on the other hand the feeling of vast space frames these constructs. They work together to generate a feeling of "place", that you can project yourself into by looking at the image. 

MN: I think the density of the information is a reach towards the desire for space. You can have physical space, but if you can imagine what happens to people when they are constrained, to let's say a prison cell, they project themselves into conceptual space to compensate. This projection might be books or daydreams, but in those projections there is space. 

CY23: They externalize their space. 

MN: Through whatever media is at hand. So if your trying to contend with the sort of limitations of a small image one way to make the image bigger is to increase the information. In the end there is a desire to go out which gets funneled through the focusing of that image. 

CY23: Why do you call this Liquid Architecture? I see the place, I can go there, but where does the dynamic come in? 

MN: It can take different forms. Its essence is not invested in a particular form. It can "adjust". 

CY23: It seems though your taking different types of media and squeezing it through an algorithmic widget, so that it can generate form. You might then fly around the constructs and check out the structure of the data base within them, is this the kind of idea behind Liquid Architecture? 

MN: There various types of sensory modalities that we have access to and visual stimuli is just one of them. I am curious about looking at the same thing from different perspectives, or different modalities, erasing the boundaries between "how" information can be perceived. When we open the window in whatever room we are in the real space, there is always a connection to the outside. If we try to envision the opening of a window in virtual environments what does it open into? What is the nature of it? It seems to me that when you open a window in a virtual space you open a window onto a scene of a sea of "raw data". Having made that connection, thinking of the data in the computer's memory as the nature to the world I'm making much a the outdoors is to a building I might build, I can then take the next step and say a piece of music, a painting, or even literature, things that we know in the physical world, are in many ways extracted from our "nature". In this virtual world the nature is data. What is the art of that world? The art in that world is an investigation of the data. So what I try to do is to take the data, and squeeze it through the "widget" as you call it, in order to push it towards those sensorial modalities. 

CY23: It seems when you speak of the real world and you compare it to this virtual world that your talking about archetypes of space and place. The natural association of an object in cyberspace to a "window" or some other kind of object, when actually it isn't a window at all. That seems to be an archetype that is pasted upon it, a labeling for the use of convention. 

MN: What is more intriguing than a confirmation of archetypes is reflection on how they might be limiting, and therefore the question of what might be alternative views. For instance, you correctly say that in the virtual world a window isn't really a window, what if in trying to make a window precise, computable, mathematical, and programmable I encounter that there are certain parameters that I cannot seem to get around, and then I look at the real world and see if those parameter exist there. What if I discover that a window, instead of being a three dimensional cut in an object, that in the virtual world it can be an object itself? In a four dimensional world a three dimensional object would be a window. What happens is that now the discoveries that are found in the virtual world allow me to question the real one, and to see to what extent the real window is a convention that is completely invented. 

CY23: Those conventions are liquid in themselves. Can the boundaries of what we define a window to be dynamic, or does the cultural identity of window bound the meaning of that object? 

MN: There are throughout history examples of people who not only have understood that there are ways of seeing things that are called archetypes, but then 

see the world beside that. Those people have been called the mystics, the shaman, the Zen, the dada, the visionaries, the people who often got burnt at the stake. They are the people of the world whose structure finally became liquid. 

CY23: Virtual reality is in a sense the essence of architecture. Its entire experience is the built environment, whether planned or created from the structure of data it forces one to perceive space. I think that's why I believe the ideas behind architectural typologies will influence how people use virtual spaces. 

MN: Presently I am investigating the concept of dematerialized architecture. It occurred to me that architecture is not just about building, but that building might be the smaller part of what architecture is about. If you look at stained glass in gothic cathedrals, friezes on classical temples, or the sculptures within Buddhist temples, you see incredible sign systems that are spatial and encompassing. The function of these works is to communicate an understanding of the world. Liquid Architecture retains those systems and sheds the building and the idea of structure. In shedding the building it is the distillation of architecture. 

CY23: You once asked me if I knew what Oulipo was. I said: "a story of zombified youth with a decadent edge". I hope I didn't piss you off, but it sounded right at the time, considering how we talk about movies almost as much as architecture. Why is it Oulipo important toward your work? 

MN: Oulipo is a group whose initials in French stand for workshop of potential literature. It is basically a group which includes writers, scientists, mathematicians, and artists. They were a group of people who, before computers were accessible in a significant way, anticipated interactive novels and searches through spaces of possibility. In this investigation they invented what they called potential literature. It is potential in the sense that they were not particularly interested in the creation of literature, but more in a structure that could algorithmically generate literature. 

CY23: Is this similar to the way your widget can take data, and through an algorithmic process, transform it so that it can be understood within a context of different sensorial modalities? 

MN: It is a similar situation, I think that what I do differently is that I don't confine it to literature or text. It is similar in that I set up primitives or elements and then looks at the permutations possible and the operations that are possible. I am trying to erase the boundaries between media by permeating things that are normally kept apart, and to have those things bear on each other. Instead of saying that I'm going to make literature and that its going to made of these parts, I say that I am going to make a work and these are their combinations. I don't limit it to this media or that media. It is inadequate to me to approach a work from one perspective, there is this other bridge that needs to be crossed which is the poetic. 

Communication As The Ether Of Genesis (virtual poetics) 

"Many types of data swirl together to form this reality. Video, audio, and texts all interchange with the forms and place of this world. In this melting pot of creativity we weave all of the strings of media to produce a woven pattern of ideas. Communication independent from its media, forming the expression of the human will to create. " 

Communication is media, Novak thinks it is possible that a poetic composition could be a structuring system for the generation of form. The work done at the ADRG deals with this issue of taking a poetic system such as music, dance, or lyrics and making them the generators of forms in a synthesized virtual world. It is a goal of the ADRG to deal with the issue of creation exchange by working in cooperation with UTA's communication department and the art department in order to further the issue of the linkage of poetics to virtual architecture and media. 

CY23: Poetry is not necessarily words within structures. Poetry might be music, where certain structural parts of the composition might be linked to words and then become literature, or words might be linked to certain primitives to generate forms. In that way they can transmute and become each other. 

MN: Once you understand that poetics doesn't just apply to words, but that there is some sort of structuring that evolves in the act of creation for whatever reason, then poetics is the study of the structuring of the ways in which works of art can be made. For any kind of way we have of receiving there has to be a way of putting together. That study of the putting together is the poetic. 

CY23: Structure is an important part of the poetic, how different parts of a work are combined to create meaning. 

MN: More like how meaning is a by product of putting together because meaning doesn't exist without some sort of manifestation. The is no meaning without a medium of its transferal. 

CY23: I can know what a dancer means by the sweeping motions of sorrow, or I can understand a musicians theme of darkness through a somber tone. 

MN: You can recognize sweeping movements and you can recognize somber tones, but whether the sweeping movements mean sorrow or the somber tones mean darkness is another domain. In terms of poetics one might ask how one might generate a sequence of movements that creates a dance, and then you might also ask all the ways that sweeping movements might be taken. Why is it that those movements might make one person laugh and another cry, or why is that they agree? 

CY23: There seems to be a fit between this issue of virtual poetics and communications. Whether its dance, music or architecture you need to understand its primitives and the sequence of its communicational presentation. These structures and primitives could then permeate through different media types, allowing the observer to morph between the modalities. Are these media types transformed into space and place as a sort of symbolic database for the morphing into other media types, or is there more to it than that? 

MN: In your language your speaking on a symbolic level, which is not what I'm not trying to deal with. If I try to describe to you the meaning of something, I am trying to put the meaning into symbols. I distrust that however because I can detect more meaning in the work than I have symbols to describe it. The distinguishing factor there is the difference between representation and embodiment. While I am interested in both issues I find that the meaning that is embodied by something is more real than the meaning that is representative of something. 

CY23: The product is more powerful than an explanation of the product. 

MN: Yes, the explanation is by comparison a hypocrisy. It is not the thing itself. 

Stravinsky Was Right (navigable music) 

"I am the creator of this continent. I explore a land that I create. As play my instruments whole realities grow into existence like a crystalline structure whose forms are my soundscapes. This is a domain of the transmission of ideas into forms, places and spaces. I hover around the music seeing it now in a nonlinear form. As I approach it from a different vantage point its composition changes and I hear it sing to me a new song." 

One of the most creative ideas being investigated at the ADRG is navigable music. The basic premise is the extension of the theories of interchangeable media applied to musical forms. To achieve this Novak first composes the music using both traditional and structural techniques. He has generated a specialized application porting Mathmatica into MacRenderman to convert the MIDI data into facet databases. The structuring of that database is influenced by themes in the music so that forms can visually abstract their originating composition. It is then possible to "explore" the music virtually, experiencing it spatially as well as audibly. I'll make my own MTV, this is navigable music. 

CY23: Igor Stravinsky wrote an essay called "The Poetics of Architecture". If you take this work and for every sentence it says "music" you replace the word "architecture" an interesting doctrine develops. 

MN: Music has it has been previously understood is something that occurs in time and can almost be understood as a single object in time. It has a beginning it has an end, you can graph it as a score does, and you can sort of draw out its plan or section as you might with architecture. There are some kinds of music that play with a combinational approach so that it is not a single thing, it is a series of things, and the order of its parts may be changed. That leads to the thought that it is possible to stop seeing music as a single thing and to start seeing music as a landscape. If music is a landscape then it is possible to extract as many types of conventional music as there are trajectories through that landscape. The composition is the landscape, what you hear is the particular path that may be taken over that landscape. 

CY23: If the composition is a landscape then idea of music takes on a new meaning. It no longer would be a sequence that is served to you on a singular path, it then becomes an exploration that has an infinite number of possibilities. 

MN: The maker doesn't tell the user how to navigate.. It is not organization in terms of what way it is heard, the organizing is based on a matrix of possibilities. What is done with that matrix can evoke any sort emotion that conventional music could because what is done with the landscape depends upon what node is found interesting within that matrix. 

CY23: As the composer you might structure the landscape so that certain parts of the matrix have meaning to you as the maker, and the exploration leads to an understanding of the composition in an infinite number of ways. The landscape may not be music though, it may be a dance or architecture that becomes music through a sort of virtual sonar, the structuralism of the landscape becomes many things so the meaning of the media multiplies. 

MN: The landscape of information is an abstraction to make the composition comprehensible. 

CY23: You could build an instrument that was an environment. Architecture and music would be one. I could make a world that totally encrypted two data types at once. I'd call that compression! 

To Being Or Not To Being (habitable cinema) 

" I am an actor in a symbolic hyperdrama. I am not alone, meeting others in a consensual cinema. We are here to explore ourselves and each other. We have chosen our archetypal personas, we have become our own shining image of ourselves. In this digital Kabuki we can map the abstract symbolic images that we have of ourselves onto constructs and guide our psychopuppets towards a new understanding of interpersonal interaction through an infinite number of possible variations of that process. " 

Cinema becomes projection in the virtual community. The creation of synthetic space infers the availability of props that we can interact with at our whim. In its' nature virtual space requires the creation of "scene", to build a "theater of operations". Within our cinema certainly hyperdramas of human experience will unfold as we interact with landscapes of interaction composed from projections of our actions as well as the actions of others. 

CY23: Cinema seems to have a linearity, just as music does. The screenwriter has a sequence of events that unfold over time. The characters recite their lines according to a sequence that creates a story. In the end there is a climax that brings the point home. It seems that the permutations that could be possible with habitable cinema would not necessarily be known upon starting the process. 

MN: Cinema implies the possibility of artificial and discontinuous environments with several streams of possible trajectories. Cinema has sound and several cues of understanding that are woven together into one thing in time. Habitable cinema does to cinema what navigable music does to music. It basically says that the cinema of the future will be a landscape of opportunity. The screenwriter of the future will be the maker of this landscape of opportunity, which will combine liquid architecture and navigable music with other media. 

CY23: So all these ideas are embodied in one thing. 

MN: They all become one thing and that one thing is world making. The screen writer, the architect, the musician will be the people who set up this matrix of opportunity into which the audience enters. Depending on the trajectory it will be a horror story for one observer and a comedy for another, but they are all contained within the matrix that has been provided by the maker. 

The Heidegger Jig (disembodied dance) 

"I see myself, but from another perspective. I am alone but not alone. The other which is also myself counters my move, in a bizarre syncopation. This being is me, but it is separate from me. This construct seems to me to be a reflection of myself dancing in a kinetic schizophrenia whose puppet strings are my actions. Others join in the dance through telepresence, they are dancing with my projection and I am dancing with theirs." 

Movement data is recorded digitally and morphed into a construct. The construct could be human forms dancing in changing patterns of movement created by a program's mutations, or even tied to other kinds of information. Choreography could be deconstructed to its elemental foundations, each construct representing a part. The dance could then be turned into a place, or an object, allowing structures of meaning in the dance to be spatially habitable. 

CY23: What you are proposing has a strange implication. These projected beings living out their lives in discontinuous sessions, that can be recorded and played back. Living their own life through the projection. It is metaphysical to think that maybe the projection itself has life, even if that life is expressed vicariously through the telepresence of a person thousands of miles away. 

MN: Isn't that true of any body organic or synthetic? The body is returning information to the brain, so the body couldn't dance without that input either. The input isn't from just one source either, it is coming from millions of sources throughout your central nervous system. The brain then synthesizes it into something understandable. So the distributed person that I am saying would exist in this world is in a sense just an extension of what we already are. 

CY23: To inhabit this world would be trippy. I think of Heidegger and his concept of the "Dasein" self, or of Avital Ronell's reference to the telephone's "externalized space" as being like schizophrenia. 

MN: Liquid architecture, navigable music and habitable theater are all grouped together under the umbrella of world making, but the odd one out that you are alluding to is disembodied dance. This world has been created and since it is possible to project one's self into this world where everything is synthetic the Self becomes subject to alteration. Liquid architecture, navigable music and habitable theater are about the world. Disembodied dance is about the Being in the world. Identity then becomes liquid and navigable and habitable. Not only that identity becomes possibly multiple and distributed. I can begin to have the sense that by distributing processes that modify my perceptions of the world that I actually can distribute my Being. In the end the sum becomes not a single thing but a cluster which is scattered that can return senses from distant locations. I can be at many places at one time. 

CY23: Omniscience. 

MN: The theme of making god comes back with a vengeance each time you try to imagine this. Its only explicable by a huge human momentum to become god, to become our best understanding of god at any given time. Its interesting to investigate how the understanding of what that might be changes through history. Through those changes people have come to terms with their image of what god is and have made the world around them. The understanding that we have of the world now is one similar to particle physics. The entire world is relational, the deeper you peer into matter the less matter you find. What you discover is that in the end the matrix of relationships of things is more important as the things themselves. If you take that back up the scale into the realm of experience, into such a world as we are envisioning, what that suggests is this state of Being which is disembodied dance which is everywhere and is defined by its relationship to the matrix of possibilities. 

The Gods Danced, And Then There Was A World (Banff) 

"We communicate to each other, but not in words. The language is of poetics, We build a world together, Made of parts from our individual dreams. There is a dancer whose sweeping motions transform into a myriad of objects. There is a musician, that creates pathways and linkages through the structuring of the rhythmical compositions. There is a poet, speaking of strange beings who lead you through this world. There is an architect, whose vision of places structures these parts into an environment of feeling and meaning. Together we build a common existence through a consensus hallucination." 

As an extension of this vision Novak applied these theories to a world building session at Banff. The project allowed a opportunity for the collaboration between an architect, a dancer and a musician as the data stream for the creation of worlds. The data supplied by the team provided a structure for the an algorithmic generation of the forms in the world. This is not just programming, the kinesic and creative structure of the artists creates a organic basis for the creation of form. Much like the butterfly pattern of chaos the data stream is unpredictable, but exists within the domain of the program's parameters, generating space and place. The session generated five worlds ranging from the most physical to the least, all created in real time from the actions of artists. This session at Banff is a working example of how the poetics of creativity is a interchangeable medium. 

CY23: You had a chance to apply some of your work in callaboration with some other artists at Banff. What is Banff and what is happening there? 

MN: Banff is a artistic media cooperative that is funded by the Canadian government. It offers an opportunity for artists and creators to have a facility and the tools to create the highly technical multimedia projects. There is literally millions of dollars of equipment there and almost no restrictions on the type of work that can be done there. It also serves as a nexsys for people who are interested in the issues of media and communications. It offered us an opportunity to have a distributed performance where the callaborators of the project effected the whole of the collective work from remote locations. 

CY23: There seems to be allot of these core groups cropping up, media tribes where like minds congregate. In the performance there are elements on the stage that seem to mimic the constructs in the virtual space. A synthetic veil is created, allowing one to see the real object and its abstraction at the same time. 

MN: There are a set of chambers in the virtual world which loosely echo some of the things you would find on the stage. The dances themselves are loosely related also. Each aspect of the work has a number of components that can interact. There are also these veils that are hanging on the stage that receive the projections, and those projections themselves have a theme that fallow what's happening on the stage. 

CY23: When you say chambers that's interesting to me from an architectural perspective. In our real world there is a separation between object and place, based on human perspective. In the virtual world that you create an object can turn into a space and visa versa. This allows the user to understand the structure of the construct on both levels. 

MN: It comes back to our discussion on archetypes, and how at some point archetypes become liquid. It forces you question whether it is object or place, and therefore makes those archetypes burst. That is the moment of growth when you recognize that what was this way has the potential to be an infinite number of other ways at the same time. 

CY23: Cheap shamanism. It allows one to perceive the liquidity of our perceptions of the world without having to go through the psychological pain of that awareness usually takes. 

MN: It encourages that awareness and increases the freedom to investigate that possibility. The complete magic is reserved for the maker. He is the god and is the only one who can lay claim to the creation of the work. Making is the central occupation and activity of what people are about. 

CY23: There is an inherent reach for genisis in the artist. 

MN: I think the human project is to become god, its doomed to failure, but the struggle towards deism is inherent in the human journey. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:Undeveloped Ponderings:ToolSpace:Influnences

Clay Graham - clay@best.com

http://www.best.com/~cyber23/virarch/novak.htm

====================

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:ToolSpace
------------------------------------------------------------------------

ToolSpace - A Practical Implementation of Virtual Architecture Theory

Introduction

Developers creating virtual environment applications are venturing into uncharted territory. Unlike 2D computing environments where there are clearly defined standards for the user interface, there is no formulated set of standards or guidelines to help the programmer create an interface paradigm. The result is that most virtual environment applications end up being exactly the opposite of the programmer's intention: extremely non-intuitive. What is required is a standard theory by which to create applications which use a 3-dimensional interface. One that will allow users to instantly recognize the task and interpret the data. Clay Graham has developed just such a set of rules by taking the basic principles of physical architecture and extrapolating them into the virtual world, hence the term Virtual Architecture (VA). (please refer to Clay's summary on Virtual Architecture for a detailed discussion.) 

Creating a virtual environment application using Virtual Architecture consists of the following steps: 

1. The application developer defines the required functionality. 

2. The Architect defines a 3-space metaphor for interaction using VA theory. 

3. The developer implements the application according to the architect's specifications 

Toolset is a collection of applications integrated into a single virtual environment. The ultimate goal of Toolset is to implement real-world computing tasks in the virtual environment. 

Toolset outline: 

Nexus

Nexus Programmatic Summary

This space is the connector to the four applications implemented in Toolset. The four doors connect the Nexus Space to secondary spaces through corridors. Icons unique in both color and shape assist in user orientation. Icons execute programmatic connections with radial spaces. A total four connections exist within Nexus. No user tools or interaction objects other than the doors are present. The sound which repeats continuously serves to increase the user's immersion and is always present. 

Nexus Architectural Summary

Primary closure elements of wall and floor with a secondary closure quality from the transparant fins that float above the viewing plane and reinforce scale. In this case rof also funtions with perimiter to form datum. Portal and breach in perrimiter define the connections to secondary spaces. The central pointer reaffirms the connection to breach of perimmter (portal) and infer a visual connection between sky and ground. 

Corridor

Corridor Programmatic Summary

The wormhole transports the user from the nexus to the selected application. A corridor is used to implement the feeling of transition from one space to another and to preserve the spatial integrity of the applications. (the way each application is oriented and positioned relative to the others.) The rhythm enhances the sensation of movement and relates to the construction of the corridor. 

Corridor Architectural Summary

Corridor is a transitional space that defines connection between nodes with rhythm. It is important to note that transiniton over time is repeated in the stylistic them of this "threshold space". Ryhthm is defined primarily by corridor and a threshold at each end of the axis denotes connection. 

Finder Space

Finder Programmatic Summary

This application is a virtual environment interface to the DOS file system. Files are represented as cubes and directories are represented as pyramids. The file object attributes are represented in the virtual environment as follows: 

File Type - Color and grouping (general X,Y area) 

File Age - Z value (higher is older) 

File Size - Volume (logarithmically related) 

File Recognition - Translucent or Opaque 

Files automatically sort themselves by the attributes as the user enters the application. Files can be selected to reveal their name (creating a linkage to common symbolic representation) and can be moved. Once released, however, file objects "know their place" and are anxious to return to it. Eight file types are recognized by the system: .CPP/.C, .HPP/.H, .3DS, .DXF, .BAT, .EXP, .OBJ, and .SND. Unrecognized file types are left in the center of the application and remain opaque. Future modifications will allow execution and manipulation of data inside the file objects and will also allow the dynamic opening and closing of sub directories. 

Also, please note the selector object which is present in three other applications. This is an implementation of a true 3D cursor which can precisely select objects in three space as opposed to a "ray intersecting" modification of a standard 2D cursor. The selector also gives off a sonic click to indicate activation or deactivation. 

Finder Architectural Summary

Finder is a procedural space, a space that defines the domain of the application being run. Primary closure is defined by wall, with breach of perimiter achieved through portal. The roof element defines the boundry of Z activity, which is abstracted through transparancy to maintain a connection between ground and sky. A icon ceters the space and affirms the ground/sky association. 

Data Visualizer 

Data Visualizer Programmatic Summary

This application imports multiple elevation datasets and allows the user to either step through them manually or to animate them automatically. The data points are color coded according to elevation and the dataset is made relative to an axis indicator at application coordinates (0,0,0). X is represented by one triangle on the AXIS, Y is two and Z is three. The coordinates are also labeled at the bottom of the screen and the viewer's position in application coordinates is displayed. The animation of the data object is very useful to discern trends that would not otherwise be recognizable. 

Data Visualizer Architectural Summary

This space was reduced to its elemental foundations for the purpose of functionality. This is the archetype of a procedural space, where a static space defines the domain of the procedure. This domain is defined with elements of wall, column and portal as breach of perimiter. 

Object Space

Object Space Programmatic Summary 

In this application, three data objects, in this case sounds, are represented by texture mapped cubes. The cubes rotate to signify their importance. By selecting the object, the data is activated. In this case a sound is played. 

Object Space Architectural Summary

The quadrants of the space represent the breakdown of function within the space. The primary quadrant represents portal, whereas the secondary quadrants represent each object domain. Closure is primarily achieved with wall and roof, 

and a vertical datum on the wall infers the location of the "object" element. 

Gallery Space

Gallery Space Programmatic Summary 

This application is a more advanced form of data representation where an object signifies more than one data type (multimedia). It is a virtual multimedia art gallery where visual and audio data items are combined to communicate an idea. The space is also reactive in that the user builds the space by experiencing the works. Once all works have been revealed, the space is complete. Each work is represented by a moving icon. The movement is important to signify the importance of the object as "one to be interacted with" and they move in sync to signify their correlation. 

Gallery Space Architectural Summary

Gallery space is an example of a interactionals psace, a space whose domain is transformed by the intergation with the application. The space has a primary domain from which the application is run and a secondary domain to reinforce interaction with application. The space is devided by the informtional objects (7) and each section is defined by its own floor, wall, and roof element. 

Addendum: 

NO-Space 

NO-Space Programmatic Summary 

While this is not a part of Toolset, NO-Space is included as an example of a purely reactive space. The object can also be considered the sublime mechanism which knows you are there and embraces you as you enter. The flower of experience. This is a purely meditative environment . 

NO-Space Architectural Summary

NO-Space is an example of a conceptual space, a space which has interaction and a spatial domain whose purpose is to define an architectural domain over a programmatic one. The space has a transitional quality in that elements change as the user changes the object/place relationship with the domain. The petals are seen as floor objects and transform into wall elements that define the perimiter. The fins are seen as roof objects that transform into wall elements. This change from openess to closure creates a visual tension when combined with the concept of "center" . Totem focuses that center and infers the natual connection between ground and sky. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Ponderings on The Potential Influences of Architectural Theory in Virtual Environments and Spatial Informational Interfaces - by Clay Graham 

Introduction 

I believe a new dawn is unfolding for human environments. Virtual Architecture will become the art of creating "human" experiences for a digital reality. Does the human psychology require "place" in order to function properly? Will virtual architecture allow designers to leave physicality behind and deal totally with the issues of space and form? Will the virtual architecture interact with real spaces? This topic is a door into the issues of the cyberactive experence and its interaction with architecture. 

Virtual Architecture 

From at very early age the brain is able to understand the basic premises of spatial systems. The datums that define a "space" are as natural as the concepts of the culture which define it. Ideas like "hall" and "room" are a common part of our daily lives wheras abstract informational terms such as "download" and "directory tree" create abstractions that are not common in our ordinary lives. It is my belief that by symbolizing informational systems with attributes that the virtual infolmational interface would give the users vast landscapes of meaning. 

This metaphor for the user space should be as original as one's own "home" and should have a feeling that relates adapts to the unique needs of each user, much as architecture does. These "places" will have meaning, because they are born out of particular interests, much as the trappings of our real architecture does. This is what "virtual architecture" is born out of, the creation of a symbolic representation of information tokens that have spatial and formal relationships. 

The use of meaning as form of data encryption 

C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is an encryption device, allowing the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol is its ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "hooks" to other symbols that are experienced within a proxemic domain patterns of meaning develope. A church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created where the intaction btween the symbols holds greater value than the essence of any one of the symbols within that matrix. 

Archetypes of Transitional Spaces 

The fallowing section is based on issues discussed in my thesis on the integration of VR with architecture. It is a summary of concepts and archetypes that would be applied to the physical world of absolute space as well as the non-space of VR. It is important to note that these sort of archetypes of space would be an important part of perception in VR, because they are based on the perceptions of human space. These are not the only spatial archetypes, but they are important elements that create a cognitive language. 

Axis 

Axis is the way to the light of goal. It can be seen in all of these examples that the theme of axis does not mean that the way is strait. It should be stated that axis infers path or way in the physical journey to goal. It is usually stated by rhythm of colonnade symbolizing the path from the homogeneous culture of the worldly to the way of God. This rhythm is not necessarily columns it could be masses that subdivided space adjacent to the axis. This is the way to the notion of place, where sky and earth meet, and ends with the passage through the threshold or initiation. 

Court 

The court supplies both light of sky and green of earth. The ground of the figure that creates it becomes the focus of awareness. The court represents the connection between the heavens and earth. This "center of the world" provides spiritual orientation to humankind's place in the cosmos. This basically represents the spiritual totem that supplies the waters of the soul. The passage into this place requires an initiation, or crossing of the threshold. It is this initiation that binds monks and scholars to their solitary search for enlightenment. 

Interrelationship of Path and Place 

It seems important to note that in most of these examples the axis and its interaction with the void of the cloister is the primary basis of the architectonics. The act of ritual in most spiritual endeavors is symbolized by path and goal. First the herald of change, the first threshold, the belly of the beast, the final threshold, and finally enlightenment (Campbell, Hero of a Thousand Faces) . This path can be direct as in Stonehenge or indirect as in the Cistercian plan. The main issue is the transition between elements and a course of design to give the project meaning as well as formal qualities. 

Perimiter of Domain 

The Perimiter of domain is the "understood" region in which a space exists. It is assited by the compositional context of the combination of such elements as : portal, wall, column, window, object proximity, and density. In summary it is the area in which it seems one sould interact with the space. 

Portal 

The portal element infers connection to another "space". That connection should have transition, and be defined by a "breach" in the perimmeter of domain. The portal is connected to "path" where an axis connects two nodes (the portals) with a transitional element. Portal creates that transition and is more of a natural cognitive abstraction than teleportation. 

Openness & Closure 

The dance between the postive and negative. Closure in its nature defines perimiter, whereas openess is destroys the nature of domain. The play and tension between the two lend themeselves to defining the nature of how the space works and where to locate elements such as object, portal, ground, window,etc. Openness and closure are primarily defined by wall, column, and datum, but can subdefined with the elements within the space. 

Datum 

Datum usually infers the perimiter of domain as well as the scale of space, datum can also define object. By creating closure with a spatial datum, and applying secondary datums to objects, a hierchcy developes through the consistancy of the metaphor. Spatial datums usually exist on their own Z plane, secondary datums exist in axis with the element they define.. 

Column 

The column is cognitively simillar to datum in that it defines the perimiter of domain and the scale of the space Column supports the space. 

Wall 

Wall is the primary defining element of perimiter of domain, but is also a important definition of scale. Wall denotes closure and usuall exists with a domain that is above the floor plane and the roof plane. A breach of wall will direct attention and a denotes a position of threshold, or a location of object. 

Roof 

The primary function of roof is define the Z boundry for the domain of interaction with the procedure. Roof also informs closure and the nature of the floor/sky relationship. 

Types of Virtual Places 

Interactional places 

Domains of programming that interact and have some form of feedback to that interaction through a spatial language. An interactional space not only defines the domain in which the procedure is run, it also modifies that domain based on user interaction. 

Procedural places 

Procedural Spaces are spaces define the domain of interaction with the program, while not really offering any interaction with that domain through a spatial metaphor. A procedural space would allow the user to use a program within a static space. 

Conceptual places 

Coneptual Spaces are spaces in which the domain of interaction does not define a programmatic area. The space may have interaction but the purpose of that interaction is to define the "architectural" domain. 

Transitional places 

Transitional spaces act as connectors between programmatic domains. It would be more common for transitional spaces to act as axis or threshold. The event occurs, and a transformation occurs. The transitional space is a cognitive herald, informing the user that a a trasfomation of space is about to be performed. 

Place is a type of object. 

If space is a given then it is a given on a mesurable Euclidean or Relativistic sense. This is a given in that any experience that can have measurable qualities such as "time" and "velocity", but that's not the kind of space that I am I am interested in talking about. 

When you walk into a cathedral there is a feeling of "space". Within the cathedral there are "places" where you may focus prayers on an individual elements that are manifestations of the greater whole. These are symbolic relationships between "the space" and "the places" that define a metaphor for information to be communicated in the experience. 

This relates to the claim that "place is a type of object". I would have to say to though this is true, space differs from object in the sense that perspective is not from "outside", and an object may become a space if that relationship changes. 

I see informational patterns in architecture especially. I get really turned on by the idea of a "space" that is created by linking architectural elements to information. I am in the process of implementing this right now with text files, where conceptual packets are given "hooks" to a 3d element. The relationship of the packets are described in visual or architectural terms and then recomposed. 

Construction and Deconstruction in VR 

I am amazed at how VR lends itself to both schools of design. The orginal constuctionists like Chenikov, or J. P. Ooud, based their design on a belief system and an abstract proccess. The essential items that were required for programming the requirements for the building were turned into "elements". When autonoumos elements of architecture were "composed" and expressed in both interior and exterior spaces a strong link developes with the act of creating "constructs". There were elemental principles of construction: intersection, subtraction, addition, binding, supporting, and other concepts that lended themselves for the conception of buildings as purely designed environment. This was a very idealistic movement in modern architecture. The constructivists linked their personal metaphor of socialist ideals into the basis for thier design, likening the "element" to the neccessary worker interacting with the other "elements" to create the greater whole. This approach to design gives an emphasis to the "element", and claims that the "whole" should allways be a representation of those "elements". Needless to say, Stalin made their practice of architecture impossible. 

While having the ability to be much like construction Virtual spaces/places also lend themself to deconstruction. It might be possible to break a "file" apart. It then may be possible to "dissect" the information or reogranize it in a non-linear fashion. William S. Burruoghs experimented with similar techniques with his "cutup" methodology. In architectural terms deconstruction breaks the essense of the building down into its autonomous elements and composes in a way that deals with the context of those elements more than the context of the entire composition. VR lends itself to this activity, creating a visual metephor to an domain of information, and then altering the position or relation of that domain. This is like deconstruction becase the essesnce of the understanding of the thing has stopped being in the context of "a thing" and is now "many things". 

I believe that simulation is a high frequency system much different than science. Science breaks the world up into finite peices that can be comprehendended, very similar to deconstruction theory. If we really look at deconstruction it probibly should have happened a while ago. Now I believe that our new way of things requires simulation design oriented systems in order to work with larger domains of information. 

I believe that science will always be neccesary, it is the microscope that discovers the "pieces", but simulation and design will allow us to put the millions of parts together to get the big picture. This remides me of a Monet where I see the picture in a bunch of colored dots. 

Babble program as an experiment in multi dimentional contextural feedback 

There is a wonderful little shareware product by Korenthal Assoc. called Babble. The idea is quite amazing when you think about it and has implications in the way these "hooks" can communicate multiple dimentions of information concurrently. 

Object #1: Court 

The court supplies both light of sky and green of earth. The negative to the masses that create it becomes the focus of awareness. The court represents the connection between the heavens and earth. This "center of the world" provides spiritual orientation to humankind's place in the cosmos. This basically represents the spiritual totem that supplies the waters of the soul. The passage into this place requires an initiation, or crossing of the threshold. It is this initiation that binds monks and scholars to their solitary search for enlightenment. 

Object #2 Mean2 

C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is an encryption device, allowing the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol is its ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "hooks" to other symbols that are experienced within a proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop, a church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the essence of any one of the symbols within that matrix. 

Object #3 Field 

That field had meaning for me. I think that as the sculptor creates he/she makes a set of symbolic associations that create meaning. All I am is saying is that VR holds the same possibility but on a very high very interconnected scale. Our society is doing the same thing in most medias of communication. Isn't this is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic society. I think that the fact that one could decrypt the meaning from that painting, which itself had its own symbolic array, given key words to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of the waves of meaning that could unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The "meaning" that might be communicated may be slanted by the perception of the observer at first, but a further statement of keywords could refine the image. 

Result 

This is field.txt only....... 

>Array, given key words to gain association principles, which itself had its own symbolic. 

>Our society is doing the same possibility but a further statement of meaning that could. That field had >its own symbolic association principles. That field had meaning for me. I think that as the sculptor >creates he/she makes a set of symbolic associations. 

>Unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The >"Meaning" that might be. Unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this >very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this very high very interconnected scale. 

Now I add mean2.txt 

>Society. I think that the fact that one could have meaning. That field had meaning for me. I think that >as the symbols hold the same possibility but a further statement of any one of meaning that could be. >Communicated may be. Unfold with other symbols. When symbols holds the same possibility but on a >symbol as an encryption device. 

>Ability to gain association principles, a church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is >created Device, proves this point fully. Think of the meaning that develope, proves this point fully. >Think of meaning that develope on a very high very interconnected scale. 

>Ability to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of meaning develop, allowing the >user to create meaning. All I am is saying is that VR holds greater value than the essence of any one >could decrypt the meaning from that means more than itself had its own symbolic array is created. 

>Create a representation of the symbols within that. 

Now I add court.txt 

>Array, given key words to be slanted by the perception of the wa es of meaning develop, proves this >point fully. Think of the mbols within that one could decrypt the symbols have "Hooks" to other >symbols holds greater value than itself had. Where the interaction between the fact that one of the symbols within a domain holds patterns of meaning. 

>Proxemic domain patterns of meaning that means more than itself that means more than itself that >means more than itself. Proxemic domain patterns of the observer at first, but a symbol, an >encryption. 

>Matrix. 

>C. G. Jung defines a very high very interconnected scale. Where the fact that one could decrypt the >user to gain association principles, allowing the same possibility but on a symbol is what Toffler meant >by super-symbolic. Proxemic domain patterns of symbolic array is what Toffler meant by super->symbolic.society. I think that the facts that are experienced within a set of keywords could create >patterns. Proxemic domain patterns of symbolic array is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic. A >device, allowing the user to create meaning. All I am is created. 

>Where is the image? 

>Ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "Meaning" that that create patterns. >Where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the essence of the symbols within. 

Now I'm going to put field and mean2 to 70% and court to 30%. 

>Device, given key words to other symbols. When symbols have "Hooks" that mean more than the >whole of the image. Proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop, allowing the user to gain >association principles, allowing the user to create meaning. All I think is painting, allowing the >meaning develop, a further statement of keywords could develope. 

>Device, allowing the same thing in most medias of communication. Isn't this very compact information >packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The defining structure of a symbol of an encryption. C. >G. Jung defines a further statement that any one could decrypt of the symbols within VR that holds >greater value than the same thing and in its nature is a symbol as form of encryption. Where the >interaction between the observer at first, but on a symbol is itself. 

>That means more than itself. 

>Unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The defining 

>structure of a symbol to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of a set of symbolic 

>associations that C. G. Jung defines as a set of a further statements of keywords that could create >meaning. 

Now 70% court and 30% mean2 and field. 

>Ability to gain association principles, allowing the user to gain association principles, allowing the 

>user to create meaning. All I am is its scale. 

>Create a very high very high very interconnected scale. 

>C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "Anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is >an encryption. 

>Where the interaction between the user to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of >the fact that means more than itself . In its nature a symbol is to be "Anything that means more >than itself". Where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the perception of the >symbols within that. Proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop, a church is an excellent example >of this. A symbolic array is created. 

>Device, given key words to gain association principles, a symbol to be "Anything that painting, but a >further statement of keywords could". C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "Anything that one could >decrypt the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol >as an encryption" 

>Ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "Hooks" to other symbols have "Hooks" to >create a representation of an abstract concept. 

----end of babble program 

The power of this using this program is that each data object can be scaled in it's part of a changing chorus of information. I have to admit, it doesn't always make perfect sense. It does however allow me to get feedback from the influences of each text "object". 

Scale & Texture 

Experiments performed by Hall, Calhoughn, and Delong all point to an increased cerebral time relativity distortion based on scale. One experiment performed by DeLong used a visual models at scale and did time based EEG and perceptional cue testing to determine that scale effects time perception DIRECTLY proportional to scale. That's right , if you perceived a 1/24th scale model as your reality, 75 seconds would seem like 30min. There was some deviation but not much. I spoke to Delong because this study is very interesting to me as a virtual architect, and he said that the military had been trying to use his theories in simulator training systems. Faster warriors. 

After talking to Delong about this extensively he also told me had done experiments with texture that created similar results, and he says its primal. He based his studies on the latency period of acclimation of lizards on sandpaperwith different textures. It would seem that variable texture mapping would be a revolution in the control perceptional relativity. 

The premises behind his theory is that this is not a cultural thing, it is not learned, so almost any human would apply to this theory. Such a simple premise has very profound implications under a virtual environment. If time becomes relative for our culture a true shift is on the horizon. 

Its a pretty simple theory, it is based on the idea that the more complex your contextual domain, the higher your brain interrupt level goes. This seems be proportional to the base human scale, and the learned past redundancy of similar scale elements. In other words if you "learn" that a door has a certain proportion to you, and then you have a Lewis Carol experience, then your brain interrupt level will change accordingly. VR has the opportunity to fine tune this transition, but a consensus of "normal" proportion would be necc. for it to occur properly, this is where Delong and I probably disagree. It seems that he would say "Hey the lizard doesn't know anything about scale, it has a very simple mind, so this must be primal, and doesn't need consensus of what 'normal' scale is". I would probably disagree, I think the lizard as well as humans learn what is "normal" and then latency is relative to the change in that criteria. 

Virtual Architecture as a discipline of design 

VR may help us understand the built environment, but is it necessary to represent the built environment in VR? In some of my Virtual Architecture I purposely will make a roof float right above the column that visually supports it because I want to represent the medium with truth, which will reflect its beauty. That column doesn't support anything except the visual perception of the composition, so by separating it from the object I can express both the truth of the autonomous nature of each "object" while also expressing the relationship of each object to the whole. 

THIS is what excites me about Virtual Architecture, not representing the built world. Objects can be expressed in terms of perception and meaning, this is the difference between architecture and virtual architecture. I could be happy just designing space and place and tectonic solely under these constraints. 

Poetics of Space 

I think cyberspace is a great environment for the exploration of poetics, on every level, at once! Not only could the forms represent themselves they may also represent constructions of ideas, or music, or whatever you can dream up, all at once. This is so far away from WYSIWYG interfaces, it makes me tingle, to think that my architecture could also be a tune and movie and poem ...anything that has a time/space relationship and reveals meaning has a potential for poetics. Novak discusses this in Cyberspace Fist steps. 

At the same, it's probably the tension between exploring the issues of *space* and *information* in cyberspace that kept this concept so interesting to me. It seems ironic that the same tension between the functional (physically funtional) and ascetic keeps architecture so active. 

Dream Spaces 

I would like to design places for VR, but not just places I would also like to design scenarios. Let's say that if it were possible to create someone's symbolic system, and create physical network that represented their belief system, (see previous articles on meaning and symbolic abstraction) and then create animated entities that represented abstract manifestations of their psychology, then wouldn't you basically be creating a dream? 

I think the VR implications of this issue are profound because this would be an application of Jungian theory of the creation of archetypal abstractions through symbolic encryption. The next step, the macro, would be myth (Joseph Campbell). If we were able to connect patterns of meaning in these mass dreams wouldn't myth naturally develop? This is what I was getting at when I said the meaning is coming back to technique. It will be very hard for the individual identity to communicate fully without this connection to the collective myth because the use of metaphor and allegory (one of the highest thouroughput mechanisms of personal communication) will be necessary. In a nutshell: A VR based hypertext of meaning 

aspect of reality if the world-maker is to succeed--purposelessness 

I think we are at the crux of the issue here, although (as we all understand) the issue is very complex. "Meaning" is relative to the belief system of the observer, although there are some meaning systems we can all identify with, the archetypes. The nature of VR seems to lean towards abstraction of experience, not representation of the real world. I hope that our species does not turn inward towards total digital experience. Reality has its own richness that would be futile to recreate. 

What a romantic one must be to feel the nastolgia of the physical world. One doesn't have to loose the images of this world we love to use VR. The nature of VR is to abstract this experience, and that might be enough for certain applications. We get back to this coding issue. When you describe that experience, I see it and can imagine it, VR will only aid this proccess. Luckily man is the animal that sees a face in blobs of paint on canvas. 

We don't have to worry too much about leaving this reality, the chicory will still grow, the baglady will still mumble to herself. Nothing about reality will change because of VR, so we don't have to mourn the loss. Reality will now just have a new layer placed upon it. "A synthetic veil of meaning". 

To some degree any MUD represents an abstraction of what VR will allow. I walk around and see the world, I am a sensory unit. I interpret and respond to this interpretation through communication in the MUD. These responses are abstractions of what really happened, shaped by my belief system. In this way I upload meaning to the collective consciousness. The synthetic "place" , which is virtual architecture, is an archive of collective meaning. 

This might be what will limit exactly how much the CVW (Corporate Virtual Workplace) can be shaped by virtual environment, because if that Virtual Worker does not have a belief system that can shift those visual identities into codes of meaning, then I question exactly how effective the corporation will be at shaping the perceptions of the workers. They can fly the corporate logo in the window, but will it move the worker to believe in the company if there is no identity of belief for that logo to represent? 

sense of hyper reality sequences. 

This is a discourse, on spatial (and therefor informational) cognitive systems, and its potential under virtual reality. A sense of "place" is necessary to describe the domain of the user's working data set. This place as a node in the a hyper based information network. How do we create this archetype of "place" so that our human cognitive systems can spatially distinguish different data sets. I believe something similar to gestaltian psychology (a reinterpretation would be necc.) so that data sets have individual perceptional closure. Informational archetypes would have to organically evolve, a more developed symbol language, this is the super symbolic society that Alvin Toffler referred to. 

Telephone Book 

What I am trying to do is not just write about these concepts of archetypal space, but to actually create them in VR, by the creation of a symbolic array. The technology involved would be much like a three dimensional HyperCard. If the basic tectonics of archetypal space were constructed using 3d structures, then those structures could be symbolically replaced by individual design elements. 

Collective worlds..the synthetic matrix, which essentially is an agreed upon data format, will effectively create digital cities except you can travel real fast on the streets. There will be addresses, if you think about it we already are in VR, my address is cyber23@well.sf.us and we meet at this "place". These kinds of metaphors are essential in the transition absolute space to virtual space because they are natural to our human perceptional processes. 

I think this issue is discussed very well by Avital Ronell in her (great) book "The Telephone Book". She describes the telephone conversation as a "space" where two people interact. VR just has a possibility of amplifying this "space". 

That field had meaning for me 

I think that as the sculptor creates he/she makes a set of symbolic associations that create meaning. All I am is saying is that VR holds the same possibility but on a very high very interconnected scale. Our society is doing the same thing in most medias of communication. Isn't this is what Toffler meant by super-symbolic society. I think that the fact that one could decrypt the meaning from that painting, which itself had its own symbolic array, given key words to gain association principles, proves this point fully. Think of the waves of meaning that could unfold with this very compact information packet. Artist's discovered this before anyone. The "meaning" that might be communicated may be slanted by the perception of the observer at first, but a further statement of keywords could refine the image. (This is why architects have to talk ALOT. Ha ) 

interpersonal interaction modified in a virtual reality 

What is important is that VR becomes an abstraction of interpersonal relationship. We must all admit that our perceptions of each other under this format is different than the one we would have if we were at a bar drinking a beer. And why would we try to make it the same? I think its important to understand human cognition of space and use our current motifs of experience to create social interaction between users, but I think abstracting those social settings is the most exciting part of creating virtual architecture. 

pseudospaces we design using electronic media 

Can you say that the archetype of genus loci could not be within an electronic media? I believe that it is possible to reinterpret (not recreate) the basic foundations of all perceptional experiences. The value of this is the possibility to evaluate the things that bind our human awareness. Is it not possible for two people who are not Athenians to enjoy the Akropolis based solely on its aspects of genus loci. This infers that such spatial systems are not just a social metaphors of the time in which they were built, but also bind human cognition. In a super-symbolic society the possibilities of these kinds of spatial systems being considered under a VR format seems very exciting. Once the systems were designed they could be spatially interconnected using a VR hypercard system. Any virtual architecture could spatially connect to other peices via conduits of referencing meaning with the other works. 

Ted Nelson's XANADU project works much like this except its not symbolic, and is for literary referencing, but the implications of hyper-indexed information are very similar. Society could integrate cultural meaning with technique. 

If people kept dipping from the archetypal well all the time we would have a homogenous culture that could not accept new transitions in meaning unless referenced to the symbolic array. It is important to note that to re-evaluate the archetypes, to take them one step forward, allows the information to "adapt". The dynamic reinterpretation of all systems should always be occurring, or we will have a stagnate cultural core. 

leave functionalism behind to dabble in space and form 

It will be crucial to the cognitive systems necessary to deal with vast amounts of information on a symbolic level. If we don't conceive "place" as a physical manifestation under VR how do we put objects "there". The issues of space and form can't be avoided, they are primal. Even the box can be abstracted in these terms. Since the entire experience is fictionalized the archetypes of the information systems will require some sort of a representation that contains meaning from its characteristics, these are forms. These "forms" are representations of data sets stored in areas, these are "places". A spatial composition of places that itself has meaning is a space. How could one avoid the conclusion of these distinctions? I don't think functionalism discredited these issues at all, but that is not the issue. Does functionalism apply to virtual architecture? I believe not. A reinterpretation is on the horizon. 

I think that space is going to have function no matter what the designer thinks when he/she creates it, even in VR. What I am trying to say is that "functionalism" is inappropriate as a philosophy for VR. The distinction is clear to me. Functionalism is based on truth, how can this be applied to a fictional abstraction of reality. Functionalism in the sense of a column expressing the stress that is applied to it. 

If we were to create a philosophical basis for VR similar to functionalism we would end up with an abstraction of the computing systems involved, informing the way the constructs should look. Functionalism in vr would put the software architecture above the designer because it would have to deal with expressing the systems and not the "space". 

What I am saying is that isn't the way it should be. Constructs should be symbolic abstractions of the nature of the data contained within it. By this the "forms" have meaning, and the "places" should represent the collective identity of the data sets within it. In this way all forms become places as you move into data, and all spaces become forms as you move out. Obviously the places and forms have "function", but their composition should not be a reflection its "functional systems". 

Aesthetics, functionalism, connectivity, idealism... 

The logician's favorite arguments to tear down is one that includes the word's 'any' and 'all'. In this very dynamic world not very much excludes totally. I don't think that function excludes aesthetics, functionalism, connectivity, or idealism, but sometimes their domains do not overlap completely. 

What I do think is that functionalism, as a philosophical foundation for virtual reality could be quite cumbersome for the user. I guess when it comes to truth we should distinguish what kinds of truth we are speaking of. Is this the kind of truth that tells us that 2+2 = 4 or the kind of truth that tells us that cannibalism is wrong? One is a linear system based on the physical world the other is an association to an abstract meaning system that connects eating human flesh with "wrong". People who work in ethics usually think these are the same thing, I do not. They are as different as the two sides of your brain. Functionalism has almost always dealt with the first kind of truth. I had a functionalist teacher who believed that symbolism just got in the way of good architecture. Traditionally software architecture went very well with this linear basis, number crunching. Virtual reality will be a domain where everything is a symbol for the data it contains and is connected to other symbols that represent associated data, this infers a shift towards the latter type of truth. 

I want to make it clear again that virtual architecture should not attempt to recreate the essence of 'reality', that's why its virtual, it should be an abstraction of the data to allow this non-linear structure to take hold. 

a doctrine almost always infers a need for critique. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:Undeveloped Ponderings:An Interview with Novak:Influnences

Clay Graham - clay@best.com

http://www.best.com/~cyber23/virarch/toolspace.htm

===========================================

cyber23:Virtual Architecture:Influences
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Influences 

Carl G. Jung 

Symbolic Archetypes 

Picture: The Snake Biting its own tail 

C. G. Jung defines a symbol to be "anything that means more than itself". In its nature a symbol is an encryption device, allowing the user to create a representation of an abstract concept. The defining structure of a symbol is its ability to interact with other symbols. When symbols have "hooks" to other symbols that are experienced within a proxemic domain patterns of meaning develop. A church is an excellent example of this. A symbolic array is created where the interaction between the symbols holds greater value than the essence of any one of the symbols within that matrix. 

Joseph Cambell 

Picture: The Circular Path 

Joseph Campbell wrote a book about the archetypes of myths called "The Hero of A Thousand Faces". In this work Joseph Campbell theorizes that there are common themes in historic myths that relate to a journey that all humans take. This journey is circular, where the hero goes out on a quest to discover a boon and then return to share his knowledge with humankind. 

Marcie Eliad 

Picture: Axis Mundi 

Marcie Eliad wrote a book where he described spatial archetypes related the themes of Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell. These archetypes communicated themes on a symbolic level, but were related to how humans understand space and place. His concept of "Axis Mundi", or axis of the universe, is a statement that sacred spaces express common architectural themes. 

Jack Kirby 

The New Myth 

Picture: Can you Find Ajak? 

Jack Kirby was presenting a new myth system to Americas youth. Allot of myth systems have a very different way at looking at ethics. The Shinto myths, the Vedic myths, the Norse myths, etc.. all have multiple players who's ethical base in never considered "good or bad" by it's original believers. This is why both the Celestials and Galactus are so interesting to me, the ethics aren't put out on the table to be eaten like dogfood, they are more complex than that, and all this stuff was for kids! I think there should be a point made that the mythic property of Kirby's work was probably the issue of the human's interaction with these incomprehensible beings, and how somehow the humans had the ability to still struggle against the powers of "cosmic forces". 

Jung: 

"Projections have what we might call different ranges, according to whether they stem from merely personal conditions 

or from deeper collective ones....Collective contents, such as religious, philosophical, political and social conflicts, select 

projection carriers of a corresponding kind-Freemasons, Jesuits, Jews, Capitalists, Bolsheviks, Imperialists, etc. In the 

threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection 

creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of the earthly and into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, 

the gods, once had their abode in the planets." 

------ taken from Flying Saucers-a modern myth 

Space Gods 

Picture: The Space god Sculpture in Aztec Ruins 

Eternal giant beings that have roamed the universe spawning, and then collecting, life systems throughout all galaxies. They are interlinked by a super light collective consciousness, kind of a super neural net, where they all know what each of the others is doing. Their presence is marked by four stages in the evolution of our planet. 

The First Host: 

"came to earth before men were upon it....but they did find 

our common ancestor. who became the subject of their 

experiments" 

The Second Host: 

"wrath and discipline marked the coming of the second host. 

many civilizations spawned in the dim past and then vanished, 

forcing man to climb again in new directions." 

The Third Host: 

"Inspection and cultivation was the job of the third host. The 

Inca civilization received them as gods. The celestials roamed 

the world on strange vehicles..." 

The Fourth Host: 

"Arishem, the mightiest of the fourth host, having enforced his will, raises his mammoth arm toward the sky, it signals the beginning of the fifty year judgment, the final stage of an experiment carried out by the celestials" 

The Old Lion 

Jack Kirby was a comic book artist that transcended to the level "master" in both production and content. Jack Kirby was responsible for creating such comic powerhouse titles as "The Fantastic Four", "Silver Surfer", "The Eternals", "Kamandi", "The New Gods", and "OMAC"...as well as many others. His contribution to the history of comics will noted for generations to come. It has been a hope of mine to one day create a multimedia environment centered around the world of "The Eternals". As it has been said before, "That Old Lion needs Swivel 3d." 

Uni-Mind 

"Human conjecture CANNOT grapple with what is happening, the concept of the Uni-Mind is unheard of... Yet... It exists among the eternals!---and is emerging from its fiery spawning ground.. In full view it is like no other life form on earth. It is a living group organism! the only of its kind...The uni mind lives in the climate of catastrophe. It DEFINES the nature of cataclysms, and seeks the path of survival. When many died in the time of the great flood the Uni-mind lived...now it breaks the bonds of earth and rises to orbit. Here, BEYOND the pressures of gravity, it can deal with the RETURN of the celestials 

from space...But the space gods are creatures of space and time and the fiber of UNKNOWN equations. the Uni-mind 

must attempt to master all of these FIRST! On his ceremonial pylon ARISHEM, killer of the planets, stirs and probes the 

dark heavens. He STUDIES the Uni-mind---it is a product WORTHY of this puny world. But it CANNOT save the earth 

once his judgment has been reached." 

Jim Ellis 

The Beast 

Picture: The Beast 

I met Jim Ellis when I was a freshman in college. Jim was an important part of my development in the understanding of the aesthetic of information. Jim turned me to some of the most important ideas in my life, such as Nevil Brody, Jack Kirby, and Cabaret Voltaire. He is a excellent artist and graphic genius that has worked with me on projects since I was 18. We have done a number of multimedia projects, installations, and miscellaneous art bombs. 

New Tarot 

Picture: The Flying Eye 

Now Jim and I are working on a Tarot Deck and windows program to make your own readings. Our collaboration is an attempt to provide a natural medium for vivid and lush database of original content. 

The Day of Alpha 

Picture: The Barbed Snake 

The Day of Alpha was as attempt to create multimedia experience centered around a real event. The event acted as a source of content for the project. Jim and I created the music, the effects, and the concept and presented it in the form of a video. 

InfoArt 

Picture: RoboHead 

Jim is exploring the art of information and how abstract concepts can be communicated in the multimedia 

environment. 

Mantra 

The Path 

Rhythm 

Repition in life, a cycle of repetition. The domain of each cycle may exists as a unit of time (such as seconds, days, months, lunar periods, etc.), or a unit of experience such as a mantra or prayer. 

Threshold 

An even occurs which changes the nature of experience. This event alters the experience taking the initiate from the cyclic into a higher space. 

Mandala 

The goal of the path, the way. This is the space of the all 

encompasing now, where life is eternal and is one with the universe. 

The Tree of Life 

Ap-Ping 

Picture: The Image of the Ap-Ping 

There is a culture in Bali whose religious structure is based around a god they call Ap-Ping. Ap-ping is the whole of the universe, the all that binds life. This they call the tree of life and see the island and its ecosystems as the body of that god. 

Fractals 

Picture: Reflective sphere on Fractal Perspective 

Fractals are a revolution in thinking if nothing else at all. The system of the fractal and the concept of its 

mathmatical simillarity to natural life is a common concept to many people. Fractals and systems in postgenerative simillarity allow computational systems to generate natural feeling spaces/places. 

Complexity 

Picture: Butterfly Pattern, or 3d Chaos 

By layering multiple simillar generative systems within a common domain, a system of complexity developes. 

Black Sun 

The Eye 

Picture: The Eye 

Sunset 

Picture: Black Sun2 

Theory 

Virtual Architecture 

Virtual Architecture 

Picture: Image from Pallarus City 

Domains of Proximity 

Picture: Man figure standing in Lilliputian environment 

Scale & Texture 

Experiments performed by Hall, Calhoughn, and Delong all point to an increased cerebral time relativity distortion based on scale. One experiment performed by DeLong used a visual models at scale and did time based EEG and perception cue testing to determine that scale effects time perception DIRECTLY proportional to scale. That's right , if you perceived a 1/24th scale model as your reality, 75 seconds would seem like 30min. There was some deviation but not much. I spoke to Delong because this study is very interesting to me as a virtual architect, and he said that the military had been trying to use his theories in simulator training systems. Faster warriors. 

After talking to Delong about this extensively he also told me had done experiments with texture that created similar results, and he says its primal. He based his studies on the latency period of acclimation of lizards on sandpaper with different textures. It would seem that variable texture mapping would be a revolution in the control perception relativity. 

The premises behind his theory is that this is not a cultural thing, it is not learned, so almost any human would apply to this theory. Such a simple premise has very profound implications under a virtual environment. If time becomes relative for our culture a true shift is on the horizon. 

Its a pretty simple theory, it is based on the idea that the more complex your contextual domain, the higher your brain interrupt level goes. This seems be proportional to the base human scale, and the learned past redundancy of similar scale elements. In other words if you "learn" that a door has a certain proportion to you, and then you have a Lewis Carol experience, then your brain interrupt level will change accordingly. VR has the opportunity to fine tune this transition, but a consensus of "normal" proportion would be necc. for it to occur properly, this is where Delong and I probably disagree. It seems that he would say "Hey the lizard doesn't know anything about scale, it has a very simple mind, so this must be primal, and doesn't need consensus of what 'normal' scale is". I would probably disagree, I think the lizard as well as humans learn what is "normal" and then latency is relative to the change in that criteria. 

Spatial Archetypes 

Picture: Archetypal Path/Goal Relationship 

Axis 

Axis is the way to the light of goal. It can be seen in all of these examples that the theme of axis does not mean that the way is strait. It should be stated that axis infers path or way in the physical journey to goal. It is usually stated by rhythm of colonnade symbolizing the path from the homogeneous culture of the worldly to the way of God. This rhythm is not necessarily columns it could be masses that subdivided space adjacent to the axis. This is the way to the notion of place, where sky and earth meet, and ends with the passage through the threshold or initiation. 

Court 

The court supplies both light of sky and green of earth. The ground of the figure that creates it becomes the focus of awareness. The court represents the connection between the heavens and earth. This "center of the world" provides spiritual orientation to humankind's place in the cosmos. This basically represents the spiritual totem that supplies the waters of the soul, or axis mundi. The passage into this place requires an initiation, or crossing of the threshold. It is this initiation that binds monks and scholars to their solitary search for enlightenment. 

Interrelationship of Path and Place 

It seems important to note that in most of these examples the axis and its interaction with the void of the cloister is the primary basis of the architectonics. The act of ritual in most spiritual endeavors is symbolized by path and goal. First the herald of change, the first threshold, the belly of the beast, the final threshold, and finally enlightenment (Campbell, Hero of a Thousand Faces) . This path can be direct as in Stonehenge or indirect as in the Cistercian plan. The main issue is the transition between elements and a course of design to give the project meaning as well as formal qualities. 

Space and Place 

Picture: 3d Space/Place Interrelationship Space 

If space is a given then it is a given on a measurable Euclidean or Relativistic sense. This is a given in that any experience that can have measurable qualities such as "time" and "velocity", but that's not the kind of space that I am I am interested in talking about. 

When you walk into a cathedral there is a feeling of "space". Within the cathedral there are "places" where you may focus prayers on an individual elements that are manifestations of the greater whole. These are symbolic relationships between "the space" and "the places" that define a metaphor for information to be communicated in the experience. 

This relates to the claim that "place is a type of object". I would have to say to though this is true, space differs from object in the sense that perspective is not from "outside", and an object may become a space if that relationship changes. 

I see informational patterns in architecture especially. I get really turned on by the idea of a "space" that is created by linking architectural elements to information. I am in the process of implementing this right now with text files, where conceptual packets are given "hooks" to a 3d element. The relationship of the packets are described in visual or architectural terms and then recomposed. 

Virtual Places 

Picture: Diagram of For Spaces 

Interactional places 

Domains of programming that interact and have some form of feedback to that interaction through a spatial language. An interactional space not only defines the domain in which the procedure is run, it also modifies that domain based on user interaction. 

Procedural places 

Procedural Spaces are spaces define the domain of interaction with the program, while not really offering any interaction with that domain through a spatial metaphor. A procedural space would allow the user to use a program within a static space. 

Conceptual places 

Conceptual Spaces are spaces in which the domain of interaction does not define a programmatic area. The space may have interaction but the purpose of that interaction is to define the "architectural" domain. 

Transitional places 

Transitional spaces act as connectors between programmatic domains. It would be more common for transitional spaces to act as axis or threshold. The event occurs, and a transformation occurs. The transitional space is a cognitive herald, informing the user that a a transformation of space is about to be performed. 

Construction/Decon 

Construction 

Picture: Chernikov's Black and white images 

I am amazed at how VR lends itself to both schools of design. The original constuctionists like Chenikov, or J. P. Ooud, based their design on a belief system and an abstract process. The essential items that were required for programming the requirements for the building were turned into "elements". When autonomous elements of architecture were "composed" and expressed in both interior and exterior spaces a strong link develops with the act of creating "constructs". There were elemental principles of construction: intersection, subtraction, addition, binding, supporting, and other concepts that lended themselves to the conception of buildings as purely designed environment. This was a very idealistic movement in modern architecture. The constructivists linked their personal metaphor of socialist ideals into the basis for their design, likening the "element" to the necessary worker interacting with the other "elements" to create the greater whole. This approach to design gives an emphasis to the "element", and claims that the "whole" should always be a representation of those "elements". Needless to say, Stalin made their practice of architecture impossible. 

Decon 

Picture: Morphos Restaurant 

While having the ability to be much like construction Virtual spaces/places also lend themselves to deconstruction. It might be possible to break a "file" apart. It then may be possible to "dissect" the information or reorganize it in a non-linear fashion. William S. Burruoghs experimented with similar techniques with his "cutup" methodology. In architectural terms deconstruction breaks the essence of the building down into its autonomous elements and composes in a way that deals with the context of those elements more than the context of the entire composition. VR lends itself to this activity, creating a visual metaphor to an domain of information, and then altering the position or relation of that domain. This is like deconstruction because the essence of the understanding of the thing has stopped being in the context of "a thing" and is now "many things". 

Informational Hooks 

Picture: Babble Intro Screen 

Babble program as an experiment in multi dimentional contextural feedback 

There is a wonderful little shareware product by Korenthal Assoc. called Babble. The idea is quite amazing when you think about it and has implications in the way these "hooks" can communicate multiple dimensions of information concurrently. 

The power of this using this program is that each data object can be scaled in it's part of a changing chorus of information. I have to admit, it doesn't always make perfect sense. It does however allow me to get feedback from the influences of each text "object". 

Practice 

Toolset 

Nexus 

Picture: Nexus Space 

Nexus Programmatic Summary 

This space is the connector to the four applications implemented in Toolset. The four doors connect the Nexus Space to secondary spaces through corridors. Icons unique in both color and shape assist in user orientation. Icons execute programmatic connections with radial spaces. A total four connections exist within Nexus. No user tools or interaction objects other than the doors are present. The sound which repeats continuously serves to increase the user's immersion and is always present. 

Nexus Architectural Summary 

Primary closure elements of wall and floor with a secondary closure quality from the transparent fins that float above the viewing plane and reinforce scale. In this case roof also functions with perimeter to form datum. Portal and breach in perimeter define the connections to secondary spaces. The central pointer reaffirms the connection to breach of perimeter (portal) and infer a visual connection between sky and ground. 

Corridor 

Picture: Corridor from PA Article 

Corridor Programmatic Summary 

The wormhole transports the user from the nexus to the selected application. A corridor is used to implement the feeling of transition from one space to another and to preserve the spatial integrity of the applications. (the way each application is oriented and positioned relative to the others.) The rhythm enhances the sensation of movement and relates to the construction of the corridor. 

Corridor Architectural Summary 

Corridor is a transitional space that defines connection between nodes with rhythm. It is important to note that transition over time is repeated in the stylistic them of this "threshold space". Rhythm is defined primarily by corridor and a threshold at each end of the axis denotes connection. 

Finder 

Picture: Finder Space with Construct 

Finder Programmatic Summary 

This application is a virtual environment interface to the DOS file system. Files are represented as cubes and directories are represented as pyramids. The file object attributes are represented in the virtual environment as follows: 

File Type - Color and grouping (general X,Y area) 

File Age - Z value (higher is older) 

File Size - Volume (logarithmic ally related) 

File Recognition - Translucent or Opaque 

Files automatically sort themselves by the attributes as the user enters the application. Files can be selected to reveal their name (creating a linkage to common symbolic representation) and can be moved. Once released, however, file objects "know their place" and are anxious to return to it. Eight file types are recognized by the system: .CPP/.C, .HPP/.H, .3DS, .DXF, .BAT, .EXP, .OBJ, and .SND. Unrecognized file types are left in the center of the application and remain opaque. Future modifications will allow execution and manipulation of data inside the file objects and will also allow the dynamic opening and closing of sub directories. 

Also, please note the selector object which is present in three other applications. This is an implementation of a true 3D cursor which can precisely select objects in three space as opposed to a "ray intersecting" modification of a standard 2D cursor. The selector also gives off a sonic click to indicate activation or deactivation. 

Finder Architectural Summary 

Finder is a procedural space, a space that defines the domain of the application being run. Primary closure is defined by wall, with breach of perimiter achieved through portal. The roof element defines the boundry of Z activity, which is abstracted through transparency to maintain a connection between ground and sky. A icon centers the space and affirms the ground/sky association. 

Data Visualize 

Picture: Data Space rendered in 3ds 

Data Visualize Programmatic Summary 

This application imports multiple elevation datasets and allows the user to either step through them manually or to animate them automatically. The data points are color coded according to elevation and the dataset is made relative to an axis indicator at application coordinates (0,0,0). X is represented by one triangle on the AXIS, Y is two and Z is three. The coordinates are also labeled at the bottom of the screen and the viewer's position in application coordinates is displayed. The animation of the data object is very useful to discern trends that would not otherwise be recognizable. 

Data Visualize Architectural Summary 

This space was reduced to its elemental foundations for the purpose of functionality. This is the archetype of a procedural space, where a static space defines the domain of the procedure. This domain is defined with elements of wall, column and portal as breach of perimeter. 

Object Space 

Object Space Programmatic Summary 

In this application, three data objects, in this case sounds, are represented by texture mapped cubes. The cubes rotate to signify their importance. By selecting the object, the data is activated. In this case a sound is played. 

Object Space Architectural Summary 

The quadrants of the space represent the breakdown of function within the space. The primary quadrant represents portal, whereas the secondary quadrants represent each object domain. Closure is primarily achieved with wall and roof, and a vertical datum on the wall infers the location of the "object" element. 

Gallery Space 

Gallery Space Programmatic Summary 

This application is a more advanced form of data representation where an object signifies more than one data type (multimedia). It is a virtual multimedia art gallery where visual and audio data items are combined to communicate an idea. The space is also reactive in that the user builds the space by experiencing the works. Once all works have been revealed, the space is complete. Each work is represented by a moving icon. The movement is important to signify the importance of the object as "one to be interacted with" and they move in sync to signify their correlation. 

Gallery Space Architectural Summary 

Gallery space is an example of a interactional space, a space whose domain is transformed by the integration with the application. The space has a primary domain from which the application is run and a secondary domain to reinforce interaction with application. The space is divided by the informational objects (7) and each section is defined by its own floor, wall, and roof element. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clay Graham - clay@best.com

http://www.best.com/~cyber23/virarch/cyarch.htm

=========================================================